Numbday Morning

The absence of tasting salted blood is about the only clue I have, an hour after getting home from the dentist, that I haven't chewn into my lip or inside of my cheek from novacaine injections that evoke eye-twitching just north of the affecteed side's needled agony.

I hadn't been to the dentist, but a restless night found me awakening to reach for the last book in Stieg Larsson's trilogy, three books that took me less than six days to absorb, my task completed between dreamless rounds of sleep that seemed to land my thinking on the same plane as a novacained face.

After my final bout with the pillow, I awoke emotionless, void of any sense of any urgency 0r willpower to do much of anything, lacking the conscience's voice of a Saturday 'To Do" list, knowing all sleep was behind me.

It was the first day in probably four calendars at home that my lungs hadn't started the day with alternate inhalations of Peet's "Major Dickason" blend brewing in my Technivorm Moccamaster and exhalations of bluish grey smoke from two Marlboro 72s providing consumable timers until the aromatic liquid could deliver the first cup to my salvific spot in the daily lineup of Team Caffeine's overachievers.

All day, my thoughts seemed to steep from mush of wet clay, spun from clouds of shoulds and coulds of what may have been a promising Saturday but, after a too-long shower procrastinated until 1:30PM, my days-long yearning for pancakes coupled with food abstinence for more than 24 hours propelled me into clothes and behind the wheel of the car, heading toward Denny's.

Marie Callender's was the emptier of parking lots at the near-adjacent restaurants and the Almighty served-up a waitress named Tina who read my gummy-brained mood as if silent Morse code had been sent and answered while she engaged me in playful exchanges that elicited my promise of a return visit next Saturday (to which she said she'd look forward), after her declaration of the impossibly captivating notion, "I really want to write a book, too!"